


Illusions

by twilightdazzle



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10690836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightdazzle/pseuds/twilightdazzle
Summary: "It ends like this:She cradles his unconscious form against her chest on the edge of the beach, and there’s a ship, but they can only fit one."Post Scarif, both Jyn and Cassian survive the battle only to believe that the other is dead.





	Illusions

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, I'm back again! I've been developing all these plot bunnies in my head and I just need to get them out. They won't leave me alone!
> 
> Honestly, this pairing is my fav thing in the world right now. How could they not be!

It begins like this: 

They meet for the first time in a room full of people that are serious and drawn and somber. She’s wearing cuffs around her wrists that feel heavy in her lap, and he’s wearing his brown jacket with his captain’s insignia that presses hard against his chest. He recognizes her pretty face beneath the glare and the dirt and the frown; he’s kept a holo of her nearby since they’ve begun looking for her. She recognizes the stature of a soldier; she knows why his mouth is pursed and his eyes are cold. She is quite rough around the edges, all gritted teeth and piercing stares, but he sees a rebellious fire behind her eyes that burns right through his chest, sizzles underneath the skin and the muscle there. He is unyielding and calculating, all rigid posture and dead eyes, but he carries an aura that overwhelms her, presses down upon her like the force of a bursting star, deadly but beautiful. She doesn’t like him, and he doesn’t like her, but this is the moment they _just know_ they’ve met the thing – the person – to change their lives forever. This is the moment that the universe ruptures and their gravity shifts.

It ends like this:

She cradles his unconscious form against her chest on the edge of the beach, and there’s a ship, but they can only fit one. 

The edges of her vision are beginning to blur, but she can see that they aren’t exaggerating; they’re packed tight, hardly a molecule of space between each person, probably packed with more weight than a ship like that can hold. A beam of shockingly green light bursts from the Death Star and hurdles into the ocean. Cassian’s blood is warm on her shirt, his weight heavy against her lap, and his pulse suddenly stills beneath her fingers, but she has to give him any chance available, every chance he deserves. She cards her fingers through his dark locks for one fleeting second, lets her eyes roam the handsome angles of his face so that she may remember the turn of his lips and the exact shade of his brown skin.

“Leave me. Take him,” she says, “please. _Please_.”

The woman – just a girl really – who is speaking to her looks regretful, like she wants Jyn to choose herself, like she wants to take them both. But she can’t, and there isn’t any time left. With a glance that is far too sorrowful and anguished toward the girl on the beach that she doesn’t even know, she hauls the unconscious captain aboard, and Jyn is nearly blown backward by the force of the ship’s engines as they jet off.

Jyn’s heart batters against her chest, trembling fingers wrapped too tightly around the crystal around her neck, heart too broken to take note of the blinding heat hurdling her way. 

Bodhi. Chirrut. Baze. Kaytoo. Cassian. Cassian. Cassian. 

She wants to say that dying alone is for the best, but it hurts too much for it to be the truth. The ship Cassian is on is enveloped by the blinding light surging across the waters, and Jyn screams and screams and screams until the world turns a bright white and then black.

 

**********

 

Cassian wakes up in the medbay on Yavin with his back screaming, his ribs throbbing, and his throat parched to the point of pain. The world is blurred for a long torturous moment before it finally sharpens and clears, and he sees Kes sitting somberly by his bedside, elbows pressed to his knees and head bowed into his hands.

The captain doesn’t need to be told; he knows what his oldest friend is going to say simply by the shattered expression on his face.

Kes tells him anyway. 

He’s been comatose for nearly four days. The Rogue One mission was a success, but Rogue One didn’t make it. Cassian is the sole survivor of what has gone down as one of the most heroic, self-less missions in rebellion history.

He learns that the plans had been retrieved by Princess Leia, the Death Star destroyed by a farmer boy – a jedi – and the Alliance has delivered its first major blow to the Empire in years.

He supposes he should be happy. This is the fight he has given the pieces of himself to for nearly twenty years; every bit of blood on his hands has been for the successes of the rebellion, no matter how big or small. But…he can feel nothing but absolute despair. He has lost so many men, given up so many friends, but this is the first time he has lost someone like her. This is the first time he has lost a _Jyn_. 

Cassian is silent as Kes talks, sinking low into the stiff mattress, wishing unconsciousness upon himself once more because this can’t be true. This can’t be the life he is left with. But he isn’t the only one who has lost. Kes’ wife Shara participated in the ground assault on Scarif, and there has been no word of her since the comms went abruptly silent. Cassian recognizes the shattered glaze in Kes’ eyes, but he can’t bring himself to utter a word of comfort.

Instead, the pair sit silently with each other for hours as cheers of celebration carry over to them, the ghosts they so desperately yearn for hovering between them.

Cassian’s has green eyes.

 

**********

 

It smells like smoke and salt. Those are the first things Jyn registers when she wakes. The next things are nausea and a burning pain that ricochet down the length of her body. She promptly rolls herself onto her side to retch into the sand beneath her. When she rolls onto her back again, she is met with blue skies, serene and beautiful and undisturbed. She feels warm sand beneath her fingers, sees vibrant blue waters to her right and luscious greens to her left. This can’t be Scarif. Scarif was nothing more than dead bodies and endless fires at this point.

As her chest begins to heave in panic, a face comes into view. It’s a woman, young, beautiful, with curly dark hair and big, dark eyes. 

“Jyn, calm down.” The woman says as she helps Jyn into a sitting position with a hand against her back. “You’re safe.”

Jyn blinks rapidly in the brightness of the sun, taking in the downed Alliance fighter near the edge of the forest and a body lying face down in the sand not too far away. There is dried blood on the side of her face, and her hip aches fiercely.

“Shara Bey,” the woman introduces herself. “I found you on Scarif just minutes before the explosion reached you.” Jyn’s glassy gaze moves toward the unmoving body. “My copilot, the one to pull you onboard. Didn’t survive the emergency landing.” She sounds pained.

“Where are we?” Jyn croaks, accepting the canteen of water Shara offers her eagerly.

“Don’t know. The explosion got us pretty good and we didn’t make it much further before the ship gave out.”

Jyn remembers Cassian, his pulse vanishing beneath her own fingers, pushing him aboard another ship, watching it disappear in the light, and anguish cascades over her.

“Was there anyone else?” Her voice cracks, and she can’t bring herself to care.

Shara’s face pulls into a pained grimace, eyes darkening, and Jyn has her answer. Her lip wobbles dangerously, and when the tears begin to leak from her eyes, her companion doesn’t respond, only presses a comforting hand to her shoulder before trudging back to the downed ship. 

Jyn collapses backward, ignoring the reluctant screaming of her body as she does so. She closes her eyes in attempt to block out the brightness and wishes desperately that this was a dream and she had died on Scarif like she was supposed to.

But in a dream, it would be Cassian’s face hovering above hers, haloed by the sun with his fingers threading through her hair. In a dream, it would be his arms wrapped around her and her face buried in his neck, the horizon collapsing over them as Chirrut and Bodhi and Baze and K2 waited ready to greet them.

In a dream, she would have him.

 

**********

 

It takes Cassian nearly two weeks to track down the people who had rescued him from Scarif. There was the healing process – days submerged in bacta tanks to repair his spine – and then several more days to find the will to leave the welcomed silence of his bed in the medbay and then several more days to track down the one person who was actually remotely aware of everything during his evacuation.

She’s a young girl, even younger than Jyn is – was – and she can’t look him in the eye when he limps toward her in the mess, but she doesn’t attempt to run either. Her pale skin burns with shame and her eyes with regret as she describes how they’d only had enough room for one person, how the small ship had been so packed with unconscious, bleeding bodies and barely conscious shocked ones that she could barely squeeze him in. She describes how she was certain he had been dead when the dark haired, bright eyed girl had shoved him toward her that she almost turned him away and dragged her aboard instead. She describes how he had completely flat-lined only seconds later, her hands pumping desperately at his chest as they had nearly been blown out of the sky by the blast before they jumped into hyperdrive and the way his hearbeat evened out after that.

He doesn’t utter a word, not even a thank you – because really, he’s not even sure he’s grateful – before he limps from the mess to his quarters. Everyone moves out of his way silently; they wouldn’t dare utter a word to the somber, broken captain now.

His room is completely wrecked when Kes finds him, mattress overturned, desk shattered to splinters, his limited possessions strewn about in disarray. The only thing left untouched is the holo he had kept in his files, the one that is more a mugshot of Liana Halik than anything else but with a face that is unmistakably Jyn’s. Cassian is eyeing it somberly from his spot on the hard floor as his friend silently settles onto the mattress across from him.

And it is achingly quiet in the ruins of his heartache.

 

**********

 

Shara’s ship needs seem very serious repairs before it is ready for flight again, and Jyn needs some very serious healing before she can help the other woman in those repairs.

Her ankle is sprained pretty badly, her head throbs and spins when she stands, and the entire left side of her body is shockingly sore. Shara whispers quiet words of thanks to herself when she finds enough bacta patches on her ship to treat the deep gash on Jyn’s torso, the light burns on her hands and arms, and enough painkillers to keep her relatively sedated for the first week after their crash landing. During the second week, Jyn only barely manages to pull enough energy together to wade waist-deep into the shallow waters of the ocean to half-heartedly attempt to catch some fish to roast over the fire each night for dinner. 

For the first couple nights after regaining full consciousness, Jyn does what she must without uttering a single word. She catches their dinner – usually only four very small fish – attempts to tend to the comm system that has been completely fried, and then sleeps silently for a few hours on the cold floor of the ship with only a thin blanket. Shara doesn’t ask more of her, doing what she can to tinker with the broken parts of the ship and wandering away for an hour each day to find them fresh water to drink. 

It hits Jyn on the eleventh day that there is something broken hovering behind her companion’s eyes, a bitter but determined frown on her lips.

“Is there someone waiting for you back on Yavin?” she asks as they huddle around the fire one night, a cool breeze rolling in from the sea.

Shara stops chewing the flavorless fish for a moment, seemingly shocked that Jyn began a conversation of her own free will. “Yes,” she says softly. “My husband, Kes.”

“Ah, Cassian’s friend,” Jyn responds unthinkingly, feeling bile rise up her throat as her lips form the name she hasn’t dared utter in nearly two weeks. It hurts too much to say knowing that he’s gone.

Shara smiles fondly. “Yes. Though I supposed he’s given up hope by this point.”

Jyn doesn’t respond because she knows that, despite the fact that Kes may be giving up hope every day, Shara hasn’t lost hers. She wishes she could feel that burn again.

 

**********

Seventeen days in, Cassian realizes he hates her.

_He hates Jyn Erso._

What right did she have to condemn him to this fate? What right did she have to decide for him whether Scarif would be the end or not?

He had been ready. He knew the risks they were taking on a mission of this magnitude, had always known that one day he would lay down his life for the cause. Scarif was the perfect place to do that. So why the fuck is he still here. Why did she get to choose whether his sacrifice would be made that day?

Never in his life had he met someone as assuming and self-righteous as Jyn Erso. She didn’t get to come stampeding into his life with her rough charisma and burning heart and make decisions for him. She wasn’t allowed to put him on some type of pedestal that made other rebels nod their heads in silent understanding and respect, that made Princess Leia send him sympathetic glances from across the conference room, that put him under the classification of hero when he really only wanted to be one specific thing to one specific person.

So yeah, he rages and trembles and burns at night in the frigid air of Hoth, and it’s because he hates Jyn Erso.

 

**********

 

Jyn takes a bath in the spring Shara found one day and very seriously contemplates sinking to the bottom and not coming back up. It would be better for everyone.

There has been something poignantly miserable – soul crushing, heart-shattering – about their past twenty days here. Her stomach too frequently aches with hunger, her bones are weary and weak, and her heart only beats because her body won’t let it die yet. She dreams of Jedha tearing apart beneath her feet, of the too silent trip toward Scarif, of Cassian’s dark eyes burning into hers until she melts in his arms.

The hunger and the pain she could handle but the memories…

It would be better for Shara too if she no longer had to look out for her. Her companion…friend…spends too much energy every day making sure Jyn is still fighting. She makes sure she eats her meager dinner, makes sure she moves a healthy amount to work out the lingering soreness, makes sure to keep her out of the bright sun so that her face won’t begin to burn again. But Shara has dreams that Jyn would never want for herself, but she definitely wants for her friend. The other woman was hesitant at first to share things with Jyn but eventually opened up every night around their small fire, speaking of the peaceful life she hoped to have one day and a child that she was always afraid to ask for but wanted desperately. 

Dipping her head beneath the still waters, she pushes down and down and down until her lungs start burning and her head feels light but she swears she can see Cassian smiling at her softly somewhere in the darkening water.

_Not yet, Jyn. Not yet._

Chirrut’s voice breaking through her hazy mind suddenly sends her into panic, and she shoots back to the surface. Sputtering and coughing, she drags herself onto the bank, lying flat on her back as she watches the sunlight glitter through the canopy of trees above her.

‘Why not,’ she asks Chirrut’s phantom voice but gets no answer.

 

**********

 

It takes Cassian a long time – twenty-three days – but he finally works up the courage to approach the memorial wall for the fallen soldiers of Scarif and the Battle of Yavin. It’s a makeshift memorial, a rough carving of names into a single wall in the hangar, but he feels it’s more honest that way. 

After several deep and painful breaths, he moves. Ice pick in hand, he carves Chirrut, Baze, Bodhi and K2’s names. His letters are too jagged and sharp, but they look perfect on the wall with the others. He adds Galen’s name with little hesitation because he knows Jyn would have wanted him there. It’s her name that he hesitates on the longest. He begins the ‘J’ but then stops unexpectedly, his throat clenching too violently for him to continue. If he does it then it’s real and she’s…she’s gone like the others. Maybe he’s not ready to let go yet.

He doesn’t realize he’s standing there for several minutes too long, blankly staring at the unfinished name, when Kes approaches. Stone-faced, he pries the pick from Cassian’s fingers and finishes the name for him. The captain’s stomach heaves when the ‘N’ is finished. But then Kes is moving on, chipping Shara’s name just below Jyn’s with a tenderness that almost seems impossible.

They stand together for a long moment after, huddled deep in their thick coats but unconscious of the snow flurries blowing around them.

“One day, I hope this was all worth it,” Cassian says finally, and even though he knows his words are empty and unpromising, Kes doesn’t comment on it.

 

**********

 

Jyn is wading barefoot through the shallow waters, sun beating down on her back, when Shara comes sprinting toward her, eyes wide but burning.

“It’s done. We’ve fixed it.”

“What?” is the only thing Jyn manages to blurt out after several long seconds.

“We’re ready to fly.” Shara is beaming so widely it is almost brighter than the sun. Jyn wants to shield her eyes from it.

Her heart thunders for her friend momentarily but then settles back into its somber beat once more, her shoulders unable to straighten into their once proud, stubborn set.

“Leave me here,” she says finally. She can’t go back. Everything she’s done up to this point has been for Shara, to make sure she made it back home to Kes, but there was nothing left for her in the Rebellion anymore. The fire inside her raged too violently for so long, and now she felt like a used-up wick. This would be the perfect place to go quietly and peacefully. “I can’t go back Shara. I-”

It comes as quite a shock to her when Shara’s face morphs from confusion to shock and then to fury so rapidly she doesn’t even see the taller woman’s arms snapping forward to shove her roughly back into the sand. Jyn sputters and coughs up some of the sand that sprays ungracefully into her mouth.

“Are you fucking serious, Jyn?” Shara is so livid her face is turning red, hands trembling on her hips as she stands towering over her friend. “We’ve spent twenty-seven days out here. Twenty-seven. And you think I’m going to leave you here!” She’s screaming now, and Jyn swears the forest has gone silent in shock as well. “You don’t think I know why you’re saying this? You don’t think I know how hard the concept of even living sounds now that you’ve lost everyone, now that you’ve lost Cassian? I know how it feels when it hurts just to breathe without someone you love. I know how it feels to want the easy way. But you’re not taking it. You’re getting your ass up out of that sand and flying out with me even if I have to knock you out to take you with me. You think I don’t hear what you’re saying every night before you go to sleep?”

_I am one with the force. The force is with me. I am one with the force. The force is with me._

Jyn’s eyes are burning now but her chin is set indignantly, fingers wrapped around the kyber at her neck, and she thinks this is exactly what Shara wants.

“What is it telling you, Jyn?” Shara continues, unrelenting, hair beginning to frizz in her anger. “What does it say about him?”

Jyn gasps tearfully now and glares because maybe she wasn’t as secretive with her thoughts as she believed, maybe the crystal was speaking to Shara as well. Maybe Shara actually understood that the crystal burns every night against her chest, that it whispers to her _hope, hope, hope_ until she wakes up gasping because she sees Cassian jerking into consciousness against pale white sheets and that the only reason she was afraid to hope was because it may not be true at all.

“What if he’s not there, Shara? What if he really is gone?” Her voice sounds small, weak, so un-Jyn.

“Do you think the force is wrong? Do you?” Shara is quieter now, eyebrow quirked challengingly.

_Trust the force, Jyn._

Jyn can hardly breathe, a different type of fire surging violently through her once weary bones. It almost hurts. She takes Shara’s outstretched hand. 

 

**********

 

Kes is sluggishly meandering through the hangar, checking off the equipment list for his next Pathfinder’s mission when a beat-up spaceship begins making its way in. It’s in laughably bad shape, more than a few panels missing here and there, scorch marks covering nearly every inch, bent in places it should most definitely not be bent in. The weird thing is it looks eerily like…

Every cell in his body seizes, and he’s sure his brain short-circuits for a moment. When the blood rushes back into his body, he’s moving at lightning speed, shoving by new recruits and generals whose admonishments fall on deaf ears. He thinks he’s either going to throw up or pass out, but somehow, he keeps moving until he sees a head of curly dark hair that he knows so well, too well. Shara is thin, thinner than he remembers, and her clothes are a little ratty and torn but she’s smiling so brightly that he thinks for a moment they’re back under the blazing sun of Yavin. He’s in a full-on sprint now, his body crashing so violently with hers that he can hear the wind get knocked from her lungs, but she laughs and hugs him back, her tears dripping down the side of his neck. 

People are staring in disbelief, whispering openly and some even tearing up at the display. Kes notices none of it, and it’s several long minutes of his hands grazing along his wife’s body and her fingers clutched in his hair before he can detach himself from her.

“I don’t…how…I.” Words are beyond him at this point, and Shara only laughs and kisses him soundly. 

“It’s a long story, Kes. But I came back to you.” 

They are locked together for several minutes more before he notices a figure standing off to the side. He recognizes her, he thinks. She’s more gaunt and a lot tinier than he recalled, but it’s…

“Jyn Erso,” he gasps as Shara motions her forward.

Everything about Jyn is stiff and uncomfortable, and there’s a fear in her eyes that Kes doesn’t quite understand. 

“You’re alive. Force, this is a miracle!”

Shara grows somber for a moment as Jyn takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, like she’s preparing for battle. “Kes Dameron.” Another deep breath. “Is Cassian…did he…”

She’s trails off and breathes too heavily to finish, and it takes Kes a few seconds to figure it out. “You don’t know?” Kes really feels tears prick his eyes for all of them. “Jyn, he made it off Scarif. He’s here on base with us!”

Something in her grows and swells, and he suddenly sees the fire spark in her eyes that Cassian had once drunkenly told him about. 

“Where?”

 

**********

 

Jyn sprints through the corridors like a woman possessed. She has no idea how many wrong turns she’s taken, and her hip still aches when she puts weight on it just the right way, but the burning in her lungs won’t slow her down. People stare wide-eyed and slack-jawed when they recognize exactly who is tearing past them, but their faces just blur by. It’s incredibly cold, and neither she nor Shara had been prepared for weather of this kind when they touched down. It’s cold enough that her fingers begin to ache and she struggles to draw breath but there is a fire that rages beneath her skin.

She finally finds the door she’s looking for, and her fingers tremble violently as she punches in the code Kes had given her when he offered to escort her in the right direction before she took off with an encouraging smile from Shara. The access panel flashes green, and she sucks in a much needed deep breath before the panel slides open and she’s stepping inside the slightly warmer captain’s bunk. Her nerves feel electrified, her entire body trembling in anticipation.

The door hisses shut behind her and she’s enshrouded in absolute darkness, but, before she can make another movement, she’s being pressed against the wall, a forearm resting threateningly against her chest. He doesn’t know it’s her.

“Cassian,” she whispers because she’s certain that anything louder than that will cause the walls to shatter around them.

His body snaps into rigidity, but he doesn’t move his arm, and she can actually feel the fine hairs on his arm rise into goosebumps against her collarbone. 

“Jyn?” the whisper is tentative, disbelieving.

There is a lump in her throat too painful to swallow, and she nods her head tearfully, knowing he can’t see her but can feel the movement. A long moment of silence follows.

“No. You’re not real.” He sounds dejected, devastated even.

“Yes I am, Cassian. I’m real.”

“No, I’ve had this dream before,” he whispers again, but his arm is gone from her chest, and she can feel him trembling in his proximity, fingers ghosting across her forearm.

She lifts a palm to his face, feels the scruff of his beard scratch her fingertips, feels the frown at the corners of his lips and the ticking in his jaw. He leans into her touch, his own featherlight graze becoming more confident as his thumb presses over the jumping of her pulse at her wrist, up her arm, across the sharp bones of her shoulder blades, down to the small of her back.

“Turn the lights on, Cass,” she says and is surprised to hear her voice come out stronger, unshaking. 

He does so slowly, and they are suddenly swathed in the warm glow of golden light. Seeing his face again makes her knees tremble. The familiar angles of his jaw, the dark hair falling across his forehead, the beard that is a just a little thicker than she remembers. There are dark smudges beneath his eyes, and he looks like he hasn’t slept or even smiled in weeks. But he’s so beautiful and so perfect and suddenly twenty-seven days seems like nothing. Every bit of struggle and heartache and despair she would fight through again just to see his face, to feel his heart beat beneath her palm.

His gaze is overpowering, scouring every inch of her body and stripping her naked under its intensity. She can’t bring herself to be self-conscious about the greasiness of her hair, the too sharp angle of her collarbone, the sunburn that decorates the ridge of her nose, the way her clothes don’t hang right on her petite figure anymore. Cassian doesn’t care about those things. There’s a light growing in his eyes that practically blinds her, and she feels something burst in her chest.

“Cassian, I-”

She doesn’t get to finish her sentence because his mouth is swooping down to press against hers, and he’s kissing her the way she wanted to kiss him on Scarif. It’s deep and hard and breath-stealing, and this is exactly the way she imagined it. His lips are soft against her chapped ones, his arms caging her against his chest as his hands tangle in her hair and grasp desperately at her waist and tenderly cup her cheeks. She can taste the salty tang of tears on her tongue, and she’s not sure if they’re hers or his but it doesn’t matter either way. It’s a long, long kiss, and when she pulls back, her legs have grown weak and her body is leaning heavily onto his for support.

Pressing his forehead into hers gently, he closes his eyes and breathes softly for several long moments, body flush to hers. “How?” he asks hoarsely, like it’s the only word he can manage.

Jyn swallows thickly and licks her lips, fingers bunching the front of his thick sweater in her fists. “Shara Bey found me.” Cassian straightens, eyes widening in disbelief. “But the ship was damaged and we went down on a planet near Scarif. It was…we…I don’t even know where to begin. It’s a long story.” She feels so many things at once; happiness, weariness, glimmers of lingering turmoil, shock for her own survival as much as his. How does she tell this story?

Cassian doesn’t respond for a few seconds, watching her confusion for her own emotions play across her face. Jyn has always been a small person, but now she’s significantly thinner, like a burst of wind could blow her over. There’s light scrapes on her face and arms, dirt beneath her fingernails, hair tangled and unkempt, but her eyes are so bright, so alive.

He gently thumbs away a smudge of dirt on her cheek with a tender smile. “How about we start with a shower?” he suggests, knowing that the warm jets of the fresher will appeal to her. They have so much time for explanations. He just wants to feel her skin beneath his fingertips, make sure she's solid and real.

Jyn’s eyes widen eagerly, and she lets him tug her through the door to his right. It feels surreal to watch him twist the knobs to activate the jets as she sits patiently on the toilet, watch him test the water until it’s at the perfect degree of heat that he knows she wants – just shy of scalding. When he turns to face her again, he hesitates for a moment, as if he’s reluctant to leave her side so quickly but also unsure what to do next.

“Stay,” she decides for him, standing to grip his wrist. 

His eyes are so endlessly dark; it’s like being in a trance. When he nods, she swallows down any remaining nerves and gently pulls her dirty, ragged shirt over her head by the hem. Next are her boots, socks and pants until she is in nothing but her breastband and her underwear. Cassian watches all of this silently, and though his gaze is intent – piercing even – it is in no way sexual. His eyes are somber as they drift from the jagged pink scar above her knee to the barely-there burn scars on her hands and across her ribs that press too prominently against her skin.

Jyn doesn’t feel nearly as broken as she probably looks. The revelation shocks her.

Before Cassian can say anything and before her doubts can bubble to the surface, she’s tossing her remaining garments to the floor and stepping into the blissful warmth of the shower. She sighs and practically moans. In the frigidness of Hoth, it feels absolutely divine – and honestly, that’s a word Jyn has never used to describe anything in her life. There’s a soft rustle of clothing, a brief pass of cold air, and then Cassian is stepping into the shower behind her.

Jyn thinks she should feel more awkward or more nervous being completely bared to the captain that she had truly only known for a few weeks prior to Scarif, but…that’s not true is it. She’s known Cassian for lifetimes now, has felt his blood on her hands and his handprint on her heart, has watched the world collapse around them and peacefully welcomed it so long that she was in his arms. Cassian was meant to find her, and she was meant to let him.

Instead, she feels…like she’s home again.

Cassian lathers soap across her body, hands brushing across her skin with a tenderness that makes her ache. She thinks she can feel years’ worth of despair and a lifetime worth of relief beneath his fingertips. He moves slowly, making sure to clean every inch of her body and linger over every scar and bruise. Jyn doesn’t turn to face him, instead leaning back against his chest blissfully as his hands massage the length of her body. When his thumbs ghost over her nipples, she gasps softly and feels him smirk fondly into her neck, whispering gently against her skin that they’ll have time for that later, so much time. Patiently, he untangles and washes her hair so that it is lying sleek and clean against her shoulders, reveling in the fact that this is the first time he’s ever seen it free from her customary bun.

Finally, she turns to face him and leans upward to kiss him slow and soft but deep. For a long time, it’s his tongue dancing with hers, her nakedness tight against his, the soft patter of the water upon the shower floor. Jyn doesn’t realize how badly she’s trembling until they finally part and she rests her head on his chest. It’s not the cold – the shower is still fantastically hot – but something that seems to radiate from within her. It’s relief and weariness and happiness all uncoiling far too rapidly.

Cassian lets her cling to him, one arm locked around her waist and the other hand at the back of her neck as his cheek rests atop her head. 

“I can’t believe you’re here, Jyn,” he says after her trembling finally mitigates to her resting limply against his chest. “After everything, after all this.”

Jyn straightens to face him completely, and her eyes are so fucking _green_. “I would do it again if you were waiting for me at the end,” she says and her voice is surprisingly strong and steady, honest. More honest than she’s ever been in her life.

“You won’t have to,” he says softly, gently pushing dark strands from her wet cheeks. “Because I’m going to be with you every step of the way from now on.”

Jyn knows Cassian isn’t in the business of making promises, especially in this line of work, but she believes him wholeheartedly.

 

**********

They linger in the shower until the water begins to cool, reluctant to part their mouths from each other so easily. When they step out into the cold, Cassian leisurely runs a soft towel across every inch of Jyn’s skin, enjoying the way her naked form trembles just slightly beneath his hands. The pair of sweats and the long-sleeved shirt he helps her slide into completely drown her petite figure, her lips are red and swollen from his kisses, and her hair is a dark, uncombed mess around her shoulders. 

Real. He’s never seen anything so beautifully real in his life.

They settle into his bed with a mound of blankets that she happily piles on, and he hands her a bread roll he’d saved from the mess just hours before. Something in his chest twinges at the way she carefully pulls it apart and chews oh so slowly, like the bland piece of bread is the best thing she’s ever tasted.

Even though she is thoroughly exhausted – he can tell by the sag of her shoulders and the way she leans all of her weight back into him from where she sits between his legs – she is determined to stay awake. She tells him exactly what happened after Scarif, all of the struggles she and Shara had encountered, how she could no longer see the beach as a paradise and instead looked at it as a nightmare…how she almost didn’t come home because she was afraid he wouldn’t be here. Cassian listens intently, nose buried in her hair, arms tight around her torso. He doesn’t need to tell her of his own suffering; she experienced it too. They talk endlessly, mostly of Rogue One, the family they almost had and had cherished when they did. It’s still a raw wound for them both, nearly too painful to talk about, but they do it anyway.

Gradually, her eyelids begin to droop more heavily and it takes some encouraging whispers on his part – sleep, Jyn, I’ll be here when you wake up – before she finally curls into his chest, tangles her legs with his and falls into fitful unconsciousness. He watches her sleep quietly, fingers tracing the angles of her face, playing with the smooth strands of her hair, pressing against the pulse jumping at her wrist.

A knock sounds against the door, and Cassian sighs, untangling his body from Jyn’s carefully to answer it.

“Captain,” Mon Mothma greets with a small smile when the door slides open.

“Ma’am,” he responds, surprised to find her at his door. Her eyes flit past his face briefly to Jyn’s slumbering form. “I apologize. I didn’t even consider that Jyn would need to be debriefed-”

Serenely, she raises a hand to halt his sentence, still smiling. “It’s alright, Cassian. I hardly expect Miss Erso to be in any sort of condition to sit through a debrief tonight. I just wanted to stop by and check in. How is she doing?”

Cassian glances back at the bundle of blankets and swallows the hard lump in his throat. “She’s weak, malnourished, exhausted understandably, may need a bacta treatment for some untreated injuries …but she’s alive.” His heart thunders in his ears when he says it aloud again.

Mon Mothma nods. “That she is. The force was with you both, with us all. First thing in the morning, get her to medbay, so we can get her started on any treatments and medications she may need. We’ll debrief both her and Lieutenant Bey at noon tomorrow.” Cassian feels a wave of guilt hit him suddenly. In light of his own happiness, he’d forgotten one of his oldest friends had returned as well. Mothma must sense his turmoil because she continues speaking. “Lieutenant Bey retired to her room with her husband immediately after giving me notice of their arrival. I think everyone needs a good night’s rest before tomorrow.”

Cassian nods in agreement. Before Mon Mothma sweeps away in her pristine white dress, she gives him a look that is soft and smiling. “I’m happy for you, Captain. She is quite an extraordinary person. You both deserve happiness.” Then, she slips away with a parting nod. 

The captain steps back into the room, door hissing shut behind him, flicks off the lights, and climbs back into the bed. His larger body curls around her smaller one, her nose pressed into the hollow of his throat and his chin at the top of her head. They breathe together.

Yes, she is extraordinary. They are extraordinary.

 

**********

 

It begins like this:

They’re in the room where they met for the first time, but now it is full of people who are smiling and awed and happy. Her eyes are _bright, bright, bright_ , and his back is firm and strong. He recognizes the fire that simmers in her eyes; he’s felt that heat, like that of a thousand suns, blind and burn and revive him. She recognizes the stature of a lover; she knows why he stands so resolutely beside her, his hand resting at the back of her neck like it belongs there. She is all sun-burnt skin and slightly too-prominent bones, but there is a liveliness about her that shines and hums like electricity right through his own veins. He is all war-hardened soldier and shadows underneath his eyes, but there is a serenity about him that soothes the pain that lingers in her soul. They were always meant to find each other.

And the universe stitches itself back together again.

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, I will start writing things that are lighter on the angst soon, buuuuut...it's just so fun to write. Thanks for reading!


End file.
